


A Series of Crooked Turns

by rustandstardust (milele)



Series: ...But Water Beats Rock [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternative Universe--Enchanted Forest, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Not Canon Compliant, but almost, but keeping the bare bones?, depending on patience levels, is there a tag for turning canon inside out and upside down?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-15 02:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7202126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milele/pseuds/rustandstardust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the White Kingdom, seventeen years after the Evil Queen disappears, 'happily ever after' is a gift no-one has to question. But what if forever is designed by a series of choices and isn't just a destination? For Emma, Princess of the White Kingdom, the secret to happiness might lie with Regina, a woman who is as imperfectly furious as Emma herself never dared to be. For Regina, the deposed Evil Queen, happiness is an impractical possibility she can't dare to want. What if all the best intentions and all the worst decisions reveal a journey of discovery, of love and hatred, of good and evil, worth knocking their fated 'happily ever after's' right off the axis?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trouvaille

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for OUAT and my first fanfiction in many, many years, but this story has been churning since December. Eventually I had to let it galvanize into words or risk being taken captive by itchy fingers and fanficky dreams. 
> 
> I'm intrigued by the concept of 'happily ever after' and good/evil as OUAT defines them, mainly because nothing should be as black and white as a fairy-tale likes to pretend the world ought to be. The paradigm of heroes and villains deserves to be turned inside out and to have its innards studied now and again, so this is an overly wordy and likely extremely long exploration of who Emma, and Regina, and everyone else would be if given a different set of circumstances. 
> 
> This is the first part--and the most Enchanted forest heavy and historical part--of what I see as a trilogy. It'll also be the most or possibly the only semi-canon compliant piece. It requires echoes of 'reality' but a fair amount of AU filling in of the blanks.
> 
> I haven't watched the show religiously since Season 3b (I blame my lack of electricity nearly as much as TBTB), but I've read enough of y'alls fanfiction to fill a small, smutty, rainbow library. That being said, I don't have a beta and I likely missed crucial elements of canonical history. So sorry about that, folks.
> 
> This chapter was designed to be mostly exposition/prologue, and actual human interactions and dialogue are definitely a fair amount of the rest of the work. Leave comments, suggestions, complaints below!

**Chapter 1:** Trouvaille _(n.) something lovely discovered by chance; a windfall._

_****_

People have decided a lot of things are dangerous.  Crossbows, potions, knights and swords and tiny black dresses with a slit up the side. Magic mirrors, engagement rings, quill pens, and hands that grab without ever holding.

_Corsets that pinch and doorknobs that lock_

_Brown eyes that are tinted purple_

_Cold stone stairwells_

_and_

_Purple eyes that are bleeding brown_

People have decided a lot of words are dangerous, too.  Things both said and forever unsaid, words written on paper and carved into the underside of fledgling hearts, phrases and incantations and wordy pronouncements woven from both too much and too little thought. 

_“Once upon a time.”_

_“I will destroy your happiness if it’s the last thing I do.”_

_"You’re Snow White’s daughter?”_

_“Love is weakness.”_

_“We will never be that simple.”_

_“Once upon a time.”_

But the problem is, people decided. People. Whose job is it to decide anything for anyone?  People decided _once upon a time_ meant happy endings and dreamy, fairy-tale forevers. That the shape of the past was enough of an outline for the future, because how could life be anything but wonderful—for heroes, for those not known as dangerous—how could the glittering threat of forever built upon the bones of _almost_ … _almost_ … _almost_ … How could it be anything but fate?  

The breathtakingly terrible thing about those people—the ones who decide, the ones who know what is and is not dangerous with an enviously unshakeable certainty— the _dangerous_ thing about them, is their very conviction. Change is a fickle, frightening thing for people fighting for happily ever after, because who’d want to improve once upon a time? Who could possibly use an empty past as a demand for a better future?

Who would ever dare? 

*

  

The White Kingdom was one of those idyllic and enviable places bards liked to write odes to or use as the setting of an epic poem. The very name of the kingdom evoked images of farmers breaking bread with benevolent knights, and of a royal family kindly sharing their happily ever after like a sip of sweet wine they could pass around in a flask. The hills were green and rolling. Songbirds had a surprisingly eclectic vocabulary. The sun was so bright and so present, there was a flower problem in the southern valley. Too many tulips, the flower merchants said. 

And it should do just that, considering how patiently Queen Snow and King Charming have entertained poets in their court. How graciously they’ve dedicated their time to these guests, from arranging interviews with villagers to allowing bards to sit at the forefront of the royal procession. It was well known that everything written about the White Kingdom had to be true since Queen Snow and King Charming were so generous and so beautiful and so willing to share their side of the story.

And you would know of their benevolence, if you lived there, because it was inscribed on road signs and touted in New Year’s speeches and generally spread as a balm across the kingdom—not the entire epic poem, of course, but “happily ever after” finished each pronouncement as both a prayer and a promise, and there wasn’t anyone in the White Kingdom who didn’t know just how lucky they were to live there.  

Everyone, that is, except Emma.

Princess Emma of the White Kingdom was fairly certain there was nowhere she’d like to be less—anywhere but the throne room, anywhere but the palace, anywhere but behind the gates, anywhere but the White Kingdom at all.

According to the poems, Emma was as fair as her mother Queen Snow and as gallant as her father King Charming. She had her mother’s giving smile, her father’s piercing eyes, and waves of golden hair sunnier than a laugh. You could hear music in her footsteps while she danced, and the bards said a touch of her hand could cure the common cold. The poems were why Emma knew her parent’s kingdom wasn’t anything like hers (she still wasn’t sure that was a bad thing).  

According to Emma, her nose was permanently red and peeling from accidentally falling asleep in the grass. She was quick to temper and usually fifteen steps behind her tongue, constantly cleaning up the mess. There was a pile of old dresses stuffed under her bed, because there was nothing worse than re-stitching hems or patching rips when there were horses to ride and trees to climb. She often dripped soup down her collar and dragged her sleeve in the sauce, and there was a dent in the door to the pastry kitchen from where she’d kicked it three hundred and sixty-five days in a row.

Emma found the slippage between Princess Emma and Just Emma for the first time when she was six years old. 

Granny Lucas, who ran the palace kitchen (including anyone and anything that came out of it), had been teaching Emma to make pancakes one morning after Emma, for the hundredth time, had demonstrated that a little girl’s appetite could be more voracious than four serving girls and a blacksmith. Emma had been elbow deep in her task, quite literally, her bare legs dangling off the counter and the curled ends of her hair dripping pancake batter down the back of her nightgown, when her mother had swept into the kitchen. Snow had clucked and frowned, an _Oh, Emma_ tilt to her head that was all too familiar. 

“Princess don’t eat pancakes,” Snow had said on their way back upstairs, holding Emma’s hand with her gloved one. “Princess eat berries and sip tea at the dining table so everyone knows where they are.”  

When Emma was ten, they had a ball at the palace and invited the whole kingdom. It was mostly because of Emma’s birthday, but also because of someone named Regina who wasn’t there anymore. Emma didn’t really understand lots of what her father said when he was giving his speech—something to do with heroes and villains, triumphs and tests, statues and fairies and magic. But she decided to like this Regina, because, after the speech, Emma danced two whole times with her father and once with her mother before either of them had to go talk with anyone else. Even Blue, who her mother thought she didn’t know was often sent by her parents to keep Emma’s skirts clean and her head on her lessons, let Emma sneak a jam tart.

It would’ve been the very best birthday party Emma had ever seen—even better than the ball last year where Princess Melody’s mother let them go swimming—except it just. kept. going (and going. and going. and going). The sun was brighter than the chandelier, spilling like water through the stained glass, and she couldn’t help but stare out the window. For her birthday, she wished that she could be the sort of princess who lived in the trees and ate dandelions for supper. Or at the very least, Emma wished she didn’t have to be the sort of princess who listened to Princess Briar Rose and Princess Alexandra debate the merits of embroidery versus needlework.

“Princesses don’t want anyone to know when they’re not happy,” her mother said, after telling Emma that no, she couldn’t go play outside and no, she couldn’t help them pass out pieces of cake, “because then people would think you’d forgotten how lucky you are.”  

When Emma was thirteen, she went with her parents for the very first time on a tour of the kingdom. She’d been allowed to wear a shift instead of a full-skirted gown, and her mother had taught her how to peek juuuust right through the doors of the carriage to see the forest. It was going to be an adventure, Emma had thought, just the three of them, and today they’d get to run in the grass and ride horses and see the trees up close. Just like her parents did before she was born ,when they’d been the ‘Snow the Bandit’ and the ‘Prince Charming’ from the stories Aunt Ruby liked to tell when Emma helped her roll out bread dough.

But they didn’t run in the grass or ride horses or see anything up close at all, except for people Emma didn’t know who liked to kiss her mother’s hand and touch Emma’s hair and never stopped smiling. Mother started smiling, too, a disease she’d caught from one of the women who kept sticking flowers in Emma’s hair. The thorns scratched her neck and one woman smelled like she’d gotten lost on the way to the chamber pot. But Mother smiled smiled smiled through too red lips until Emma started to smile, too,  _smiledsmiledsmiled_ , until smiling stopped meaning anything at all. 

On the way home the bench in the carriage was slick under her dress and liked to shift when she kicked her legs, and then Mother was holding her hand and Father was holding her hand and Emma couldn’t see out the doors of the carriage anymore.

“Princess aren’t supposed to play when there’s people they can help,” her father had said, picking petals out of her hair, “and you have to remember there’s always someone who needs help more than you.”

Eventually, as Emma grew up, she came to realize the difference between Princess Emma and Just Emma was mostly one of convenience. She hid Just Emma like one might bury jam hands under a princess’ skirt or a book under the covers during a night of beauty sleep—a not-secret/secret which was equal parts exciting and terrifying, and exactly what she never wanted to need. 

Princess Emma learned when to deploy each type of curtsy, the best way to greet an Earl, the proper way to accept gifts from villagers, and the difference between a teaspoon and a sugar spoon and a stirring spoon.

Just Emma learned when Aunt Ruby was inclined to let her slip outside during lessons, how many glasses of wine her father needed to start telling stories of the time before, that toads (not spiders) kept Princess Alexandra from ever wanting to spend the night in the palace again. She learned when to smile and how much teeth to show and when it was safe to laugh or when it was best to bite her cheek instead.

But mostly, Princess Just Emma learned that one day, and one day soon, she would leave the White Kingdom and never look back. There were as many shades of freedom as there were colors in the sky, and while the palace might mean freedom to Queen Snow and King Charming, nothing seemed like a better happily ever after for her than a forever without walls and life in a kingdom where she’d never have to be alone again.

 

**

 

To say everything was her mother’s fault might be a (slight) over-exaggeration, but everyone expected princesses to be dramatic anyway. Like most seventeen year-old girls, Emma was fairly certain everything bad that’d happened today was her mother’s fault. Although Emma was also fairly certain that other people’s mothers were not the queen, and they certainly weren’t Snow White.

But because Emma’s mother was both of those things—the queen and also Snow White—Emma had spent most of the morning sipping rose tea on the balcony with Queen Nala’s insipid nephew, Sumbua, and had very nearly dove over the railing after he’d “accidentally” touched her knee with his furry hand for the thirty-five thousandth time. But considering how many ‘what-if’ near miss stories Sultana Jasmine had told at the last ball, Emma had elected to feign a lady-like headache instead. She’d excused herself to lay down and had stolen out of the hall while Sumbua was preening in the reflection of the tea kettle.

He was just another in a long, long, long line of princes her mother was trying to convince (Princess) Emma would be simply divine for her happily ever after fairy-tale love story, although all of the princessly batting of the eyelashes and airy giggles were coming from Snow herself.  Emma had only stayed on the balcony as long as she had because Aunt Ruby had bet Mulan, head of the royal family’s personal guard, that Emma wouldn’t last half an hour with this particular suitor. When Mulan won against Aunt Ruby, Emma usually got to keep half.    

Which was how, at quarter past mid-day on an exasperatingly sunny day, Emma found herself taking the stairs to the dungeon two at a time. She had a meat pie in one hand, a flask of wine tucked into the bodice of her dress, and two tarts in her sleeve (when she tripped over her hem, Emma honestly considered falling rather than dropping the food).

The dungeon wasn’t exactly the place most people would think to look for a princess, which made it the very best place for a wayward princess to hide. Yes, it was shockingly devoid of sunshine and absolutely without any grass, and yes, it did forever smell slightly like old bread and her father’s feet. But it was quiet and empty and hers.

Emma had been coming down to hide in the dungeon since she was fourteen or fifteen, right after Granny kicked her out of the kitchen for the first time, and right before the day her mother sat Emma down and explained how lucky she was to be promised an easy happily ever after with a prince of her very own. A happily ever after without any magic or fighting or evil stepmothers getting in the way. Snow had beamed so widely and braided Emma’s hair so gently, so she’d bit her tongue to keep from mentioning the jewelry heist she wasn’t supposed to know anything about or the fact that (Just) Emma didn’t want to find a prince at all. Especially a prince, but that wasn’t something they talked about.   

The dungeon had many different cells framing a dark hallway Emma had never before dared to wander through. The three cells in the front, by the stairs, were the only ones she’d ever really seen because the ones in the back—well, she wasn’t scared, of course, just saving that adventure for another day. Someone else apparently came down here, too, because several lit torches hung on the wall and flickered through the darkness.

It was probably a soldier, she realized, and the thought of anyone else coming down here sat like a lump of yarn in her throat.  There were never any prisoners in the dungeon. Probably because everyone in the White Kingdom was living happily ever after and never had cause to do anything any differently.

But that had suited Emma just fine for the past few years when all she’d needed to do was exactly whatever she’d wanted to at the time. There were a few (admittedly, terrible) drawings she’d scratched into the floor of the first cell with a blade. Truthfully, she still couldn’t figure out how to get the size of her mother’s eyes right when she was drawing family portraits, and they always came out too big. Half a dozen ends and odds littered the floor of the corner cell, remnants of back when Emma didn’t know how to pick a lock; that one had the newest door, and it’d taken her three months and a carefully worded conversation with Sultan Aladdin to get inside.  

Emma stared at the torches, squinting and relaxing her eyes over and over until they shrank to pinpricks and then edged back into place at the forefront of the hallway. Today she would make it to the very end of the cells, Emma decided, just because she could. This was her dungeon—she ought to know if there were torches at the other side of the hall, too, or a secret storage room for Granny’s pastries, or bears, or any cells at all. If _they_ could do it, _she_ could do it. And Emma most definitely was not scared—not even a little bit, because she was much too old and much too brave to be scared of the dark—so if she was running down the hallway and if she was holding the bread knife out in front of her, it was only a coincidence.

And Emma most definitely was not scared—not even a little bit, because she was much too old and much too brave to be scared of the dark—so if she was running down the hallway and if she was holding the bread knife out in front of her, it was only a coincidence.

The good news: Emma was much faster than she’d thought, and she’d reached the end of the hallway without running into any soldiers and/or bears. 

The bad news: Emma was much faster than she’d originally thought, and she’d reached the end of the hallway without finding a secret storage room for Granny’s pastries. 

The end of the hallway had come upon her extraordinarily quickly, and she hadn’t had time to slow down before slamming to the stone and promptly falling backward. She hissed around a mouthful of dank air, and dabbed at the blood on her knee with the cuff of her sleeve.

“Blue is going to kill me,” Emma grumbled, poking at the gash. “And I just finished my washing. How is everything always dirty?” 

Even though Blue had technically graduated from Emma’s nursemaid to head lady-in-waiting as Emma herself had gotten older, no one in the palace ever expected Blue to do much of anything—especially Blue herself. Both Blue and Snow liked to remind Emma of the humbling importance of washing her own clothes and sewing her own ripped hems; but honestly, not having to do just that was the only reason Emma entertained being a princess in the first place.

Unfortunately, the back half of the dungeon was annoyingly identical to the more convenient half of the dungeon. A faux window had been cut into the back wall and fitted with bars, and Emma was smugly satisfied when she noticed it was slightly crooked and only just out of reach. But the same eerily identical cell bars marched four by four across the walls. The same _drip drip drip_ whispering seemingly in every corner all at once. The same…not completely empty cell.

Something was in the very back cell on the right side, furthest from the torches. Something which, Emma was amazed to note, was shaped like a person.

She pressed her face to the bars and peered inside, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever it was her parents had forgotten down here. The bars were cold on her cheek, and she stubbed her toe on the strip of metal where the floor met the door while trying to get a closer look. But this particular cell was hardly touched by the swath of light filtering through the window, and a shadowy…something was the best estimate Emma could make. She’d have to go inside, then.

Maybe it was a witch or a magician, left over from the war before Emma was born. Maybe it was a princess like Emma who’d hidden down here too and gotten stuck pretending. Maybe it was one of her father’s soldiers waiting to catch her and bring her back upstairs to drink more nasty tea.  It didn’t really matter who it was, though, because how could she leave now?

Thanks to both fate and happenstance, the lock on this particular cell was rather old and already starting to rust. Emma, who always kept a straight-pin in the lining of her skirt (in case of both tears and the need to escape, in equal measure) picked the lock in seconds. It was disturbingly easy, all things considered, for the young princess to open the only occupied cell in the otherwise empty and unguarded dungeon of the main palace in the White Kingdom. This couldn’t be a truly despicable or dreadfully dangerous prisoner, then, because even Emma’s parents weren’t this ingenuous.

Emma was almost disappointed, even as she yanked the door open and stepped inside. It’s not as though she wanted to unleash a mess of trouble on her parents or the kingdom, but an escaped prisoner would be desperately more exciting than etiquette classes or being allowing herself to be courted. A soldier, maybe, who’d been sleeping off a clumsily violent night with a cask of ale, or a traveling merchant who hadn’t known of her mother’s ban on apples. Not trouble, necessarily, but just enough commotion for Emma to steal that much more time to herself.

“Besides,” she reassured, the strident whisper echoing a bit too loudly, “nothing exciting ever happens in the White Kingdom.”

A shadow, which scampered suspiciously like a rat, hugged the back wall and disappeared. Emma startled and stubbed her toe on the uneven stone, biting her lip to keep from ruining the moment with a princessly shriek. Whoever it was, they were either respectfully or mulishly quiet if they were even there at all.

Hardly any light survived inside the cell, and Emma had to keep taking tinier and tinier steps towards the middle. But, just when Emma had half convinced herself that the shape had been a trick of the light, her fingers brushed against something tall and hard and definitely real. And cold, eerily colder than any person should be.

She squinted, her mouth furrowing with the effort and the tip of her tongue coming to rest in the divot of her upper lip, and fiercely pictured the cell just that much brighter. Sometimes, for reasons Emma both did not and did not want to know, if she thought hard enough and wanted it badly, things around her sort of…happened. It wasn’t anything she’d consider sharing with her parents or even Aunt Ruby—partially because she could never predict when it’d work for her, and partially because these accidents were nearly as terrifying as they were thrilling. But the room started to swell with a dim, velvety light, the color of fireflies or light through water.

It was a sign, Emma figured, that she wasn’t going to get in trouble for being down here, because fate in the White Kingdom was as much the law as it was an ethereal improbability.

There was a statue in the center of the cell, Emma could see now, a perfectly carved and excessively beautiful statue of a woman who was too perfect to ever exist outside of an artistic rendering. She was small in stature, but the arch of her eyebrows and the curl of her lip was purposefully and exaggeratedly menacing and loomed larger than life. The artist’s attention to detail was exquisite, Emma noticed, as she ran her fingers over the deep folds of the statue’s skirt and across the high ridge of her collar. No detail had gone unexplored, from jeweled cuffs to bodice laces to cleavage far too indelicate for any courtly woman who would wear this gown. She had the sort of beauty Emma liked to watch from a distance, ineffable as a sunset and too far out of reach for so many reasons.

A sunset, never a sunrise, and that was forever the end and the beginning of it.          

Considering how fondly her parents collected statues of oversized birds and paintings of knights in battle, Emma would’ve thought they’d have found someplace more fitting for this statue than the deepest recesses of their palace. It was almost as if they were hiding her down here on purpose, consciously as removed from her as they could be without still doing much of anything at all. Short of smashing the statue with a hammer or sending her to a neighboring kingdom.  

Emma ran her fingers over the arcs of the statue's bracelets one last time and took a deep breath of stale air. She’d been down here long enough, now—Sumbua had either noticed she'd left or fallen into the tea kettle, and Blue or Aunt Ruby was likely to have informed Snow of her absence. There was a long lecture on propriety and patience in her future, Emma imagined, and she’d only be prolonging the inevitable.

Besides, she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do: made it to the end of the dungeon, practiced picking a lock, found the mysterious not-person in the dungeons. A statue made much more sense than a prisoner anyhow, since no one seemed to do anything wrong in the White Kingdom besides Emma herself.  

She took one last, long look at the statue, and Emma couldn’t help but wonder who had sat for the artist and what’d happened to her, where she’d gone. There was something purposefully…unsatisfied about her expression, especially around the eyes, something disquiet which Emma wasn’t used to seeing anywhere but her own reflection. She stroked the pad of her finger over the fine creases in the corner of the statue’s eye, traced the line of tension in her neck. It was all so very real.

Even though the woman wasn’t real, even though she was simply stone and dreams and dust, Emma couldn’t help the tightness in her throat which tasted vaguely of guilt. The statue’s cheek was smoother than silk, and Emma couldn’t stop her thumb from resting on the statues curved upper lip, perfectly placed in a line etched much like a scar. She leaned forward—just for a second—and imagined a world of what-if.  

The brush of cold, stone lips against her too warm ones was enough to send Emma reeling back onto her heels. It was too much, and it was too wrong, and it felt suspiciously improper to put so much of her ill-placed wants on an inanimate hunk of rock.

During supper tonight, Emma would keep her elbows off the table and make special effort to find the proper soup spoon. She’d listen to nearly all of her mother’s concerns, tailor at least one of her skirts, and maybe even let Sumbua kiss her hand. She’d be a good princess, she’d be a good daughter, and she’d forget that any of this almost happened. Besides, wishes and what-ifs didn’t matter in the White Kingdom, everyone knew that—they were far too lucky.    

 

***

 

The moon was high that night and brighter than the queen’s diamonds, but no one in the kingdom could see more than the haziest of shadows. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and stars sparkled in the sky’s corners like a fire in the hearth. No one in the kingdom could see the moon that night, however, because a flock of birds was blocking out the light. 

Blue would’ve called it a bad omen, if she’d been awake, and Queen Snow and King Charming would’ve tried to conjure a half-forgotten memory, if they’d been awake. The villagers and the peasants and the other citizens of the kingdom lit extra candles and opened their windows that much wider, and didn’t bother to think of other moonless nights and other times when the wind had smelled lightly of sulfur. This was the White Kingdom, and nothing bad happened there anymore.

But deep in the recess of the White palace, in the very back cell on the right side of the dungeon, furthest from the torches, something rasped like stone on stone. And brown eyes so dark they were nearly purple opened for the first time in eighteen years.


	2. Flux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm likely going to switch perspectives per chapter, unless it starts to become unwieldy. 
> 
> Next chapter will focus on Emma trying to determine who the statue is, why its in her dungeon, whether or not that affects her own wants and feelings, and what exactly they can do for one another. Regina doesn't have nearly as much control over her own emotions as she thinks.

_flux (n)._ The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change ... We accept this. (We must accept this). 

 

*

 

When Regina opened her eyes, is was as though she’d gone blind. For a split, violent second, she was fairly convinced that she was dead and destined to spend all eternity in a pitch black room which smelled faintly of stale water.

But then she blinked. And blinked again. Slowly the world came into focus, and she realized just as violently that Regina was, in fact, destined to spend all eternity in a pitch black room which smelled faintly of stale water—the only differing being that she was alive.

At least, the anger told her so. It was hot and soothing in the back of her throat and in the cavern of her chest, more familiar than the feel of stone under her bare feet or the way her eyes watered from the force of the darkness. 

Who had dared bring her here?

Regina remembered the chaffing of the manacles on her wrists and the glaze in Snow White’s eyes when her fingers trembled at the bow. The nerve of dirty, male fingers on her shoulder and the taste of _almost_ …how knowing Snow could never be happy with blood on her hands had given Regina a welcome sense of peace.

And then Snow, the arrogant self-righteous twit, had deigned to pretend _she_ had a right to stay. Dared to cast Regina out on her own, as if she was nothing and not a queen, as though everything she’d been through for this kingdom and this throne was just that…forgettable. She remembered anger, the pinch of tears in her throat.

And then…

…and then…

nothing.

She had lost and then she had not and now she was here, wherever here was, and Regina didn’t even know they’d managed it. Magic, clearly; Rumpelstiltskin had been helping Snow White and her lapdog of a boyfriend, but surely he was strong enough to have persuaded them to kill Regina out right.

Only an idiot capture their worst enemy and left her to nap safely in their dungeon.   

Regina tried to run a hand along the back of her neck, where confusion itched like ants, but found instead something else to love about this dark, stale hellhole: she couldn’t move.  There were no chains or bindings or magic—she’d have felt the arrogance of magic first—but yet her arm did not move and her leg did not move and even her mouth did not move when she tried to growl. A curse, then, or a potion. Her skin was stiff and her bones fused in place, and Regina wished she wanted to scream nearly as much as she wanted to cry.

 “When I find who dared put me here,” she hissed, the words tasting like sand in the desert of her mouth, “I’ll take great pleasure in turning them into a toad and crushing it under my heel.”

There was a snort, a distinctly human sound, and the scuffling scratch of feet against stone. “Sorry,” a person—definitely a person—said sheepishly. “But I’ve heard better.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to, what, turn someone into a toad? And then kill them? Why don’t you, you know, just kill them first and cut out the middle part?”

Of all the idiotic, presumptuous, half-baked… “Are you offering yourself for a demonstration?” Regina sneered, the force of the words crackling the caked hardness at the corners of her mouth.

The girl snorted again, an unladylike sound which was only becoming of a serving girl who’d been dropped on her head as a child. Clearly she wasn’t anyone of proper breeding.  

Regina tried to flex her right hand, but it couldn’t even pretend to twitch.

“I’d like to see you try. It’d be a lot more fun than what I’ve got waiting for me upstairs. Besides,” the girl added, the voice a bit louder now, “why do you think I’d just let you turn me into a toad, anyhow?”

“Not a toad,” Regina corrected. “I’d burn you alive with your own blood. It was _your_ idea.”

“Oh, ouch. That is much scarier.” 

The room was growing brighter, suddenly, like someone had cut a jagged piece from the curtain of darkness. The burn was too much, too soon, and Regina was distantly aware of something wet against her cheek. 

That was Snow’s damning curse then, wasn’t it? Regina was going to be stuck here for all eternity and all she could do was emote. Cursed to stand still and listen, apparently, to an idiotic serving girl who was too stupid to know she was dangling a rat over a snake’s open gullet.

 “But, still, I don’t think you could do it,” the girl continued, with all the care of a donkey trampling through a bee’s nest. 

 “Why?” Regina sneered, “are you that charming?”

“Well, for one, you’re in a cell in the dungeon.” The light was bobbing just on the other side of the bars now, the girl so close Regina could’ve reached out and grabbed her by the throat. “It would be a lot smarter to forget about me and just…poof yourself out of here, don’t you think? If you had magic, that is.” 

“You really should consider the consequences of giving so much advice that could lead to your own demise.”

“How’d you get down here anyway?” The girl continued, ignoring Regina completely in a way that should’ve been arrogantly frustrating.  “Even spending time with Briar Rose can’t be worse than a dungeon. But you don’t really sound like one of her handmaidens, do you? No shrieking. Thank you for that, by the way”

Regina bristled. “I don’t hide from anyone, and I am certainly not a handmaiden.”  

“You’re not with the brigade of princesses?”

“Do I sound like a sniveling child?”  Regina winced as light hit the bars, turning the room a soupy yellow. Or at least, she tried to wince; the spell holding her in place was disintegrating second by second, but it wasn’t nearly enough. As it was, Regina could move her mouth and her eyes and the tip of her nose. Not nearly enough to cast a spell, and even the thought of trying to use her hands again was exhausting.

“Then who…then why…oh, petrified pixie wings, I’m going to be stitching until I’m on my deathbed.”

 The girl was close enough now for Regina to hear the underlying fear pinching the ends of her sentences, a thread of worry cutting through the girl’s irritating sense of calm.   Regina smiled, taking a bit of pleasure in the familiarity of foolish, girlish fear.  

“Who the hell are you and why are you in my dungeon?”

Regina breathed for one, two, three, beats—just enough to prepare herself to open her eyes to this girl, to this face, to something which felt very much like a finality she was at a loss to escape.

“Your dungeon?” Regina snarled. “Last I checked, I’m the one who has been put in this infernal cell, so I think that makes this my dungeon now. Who are you?”

And when she opened her eyes, when she saw this girl and this face, Regina was almost disappointed. She was beautiful, this serving girl with the runaway tongue, that much was obvious even in the dim half-light of the dungeon: her hair was the type of blonde that had always made Regina jealous as a child (a shade Mother called ‘an asset’) and curled absentmindedly over and outside of her hair pins; her dress was simple but well-made, and cut from a shade of green that seemed purposefully fashioned to match her eyes. 

But she looked at Regina and Regina looked at her and they were simply two people staring at one another from different sides of a cell wall. There was no spark of recognition, of anger or hatred or terror, and Regina had never felt so defenselessly powerless.

The serving girl blinked first. But she didn’t move, her hands still curled around the bars, and Regina took extra care to breathe as though she had control. “I asked you first.”

“Congratulations, dear, on being the fastest. Is that your entire argument, then? Seeing how you’re on the other side of this wall, I do think you owe me an answer first.”

“Emma,” the serving girl said, running a hand through her hair. Her fingers tangled in the curls, and she ripped them out awkwardly with an audible hiss. Regina tried not to roll her eyes. “My name is Emma.”

“Hmm. And who do you work for, Em-ma?” Regina felt the weight of the name on her tongue, savored the power of them as the girl’s eyes widened. Perhaps she was frozen in place and trapped in a dungeon, removed from her kingdom for who knows how long, but she was still the queen.

Emma smirked, kicking the bottom of the bars with a stained dance slipper. “I don’t work for anyone. And I’m definitely not going to take orders from you, so don’t even try.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re in my dungeon, remember?”

“Yes, we’ve established that, thank you. I’d be careful about how often you remind a prisoner that you’re the one who captured them. Particularly a prisoner such as myself.”

“Why?” Her curiosity was intoxicating, coaxing Emma forward until her chin rested between the bars. The green of her eyes burned in the shallow light. “Who are you?”

Part of Regina, the part that was the Queen, wanted to bring the girl to her knees with the considerable power of her miscalculations. But the part of Regina that was Cora knew the power of remaining unseen and unnamed. Snow White had forgotten her, underestimated the power dissonance between anger and forgiveness.

So long as the serving girl was unsuspecting, it would take little effort on her part to cajole the girl into opening the cage and setting her free. With time, the infernal stiffness would fade and slip away, and Regina could slit Snow’s throat in her sleep.    

“Shouldn’t you know who you’re capturing? Or are you that lazy and thoughtless with everything you choose to do?”

“Believe me,” Emma said derisively, her nose crinkling in blatant irritation, “I have very little control over anything that happens around here.”

“Is that why you’re hanging wantonly on my cage bars instead of catering to the—what did you call them, the princess brigade?—upstairs?”  

When Emma smiled, Regina was begrudged to admit, she wasn’t entirely unpleasant looking. For a serving girl in Snow White’s palace, that is. Normally Regina took great pleasure in finding that spark of fear and recognition in people’s eyes, but it was surprisingly nice to know she didn’t have to be the queen for someone to choose to speak with her. “You got it. There’s nothing worse than having to listen to Briar Rose whine about how her dress is the wrong color of pink while also trying not to dance with that one prince with the wandering hands. These balls are the absolute worst, even when they’re supposed to be for—”  

She stopped abruptly, biting the corner of her mouth with enough force to turn the skin a painful shade of white. So Emma had a secret, too, Regina noted. Interesting.

“There are worse things, I assure you.” Regina tried to make a sweeping gesture to her dark, stale, exasperatingly cold hellhole, but her arm didn’t do much more than shudder in place. “We could trade places, if you wish.”   

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Emma said instead, unperturbed or oblivious to Regina’s well executed insult.

“I beg your pardon? How on earth am I supposed to know who you’re referring to if you’re otherwise unable to form a complete thought?” Of course one of Snow’s serving girls would ruin her plans, the oblivious twit.  

“I was down here the other day. It must’ve been…maybe a moon ago? It was the last time we’d, well, really, the last time I was supposed to be entertaining…” Emma trailed off, peering closer at Regina with a force that was almost tangible on her still immobile skin. “There was a statue down here, in this cell. A statue of a woman who looks an awful lot like, well, who looks an awful lot like you, actually.”

Tears stung Regina’s eyes and she lifted her head and sneered to keep them from rolling down her cheeks. So she had been petrified, then, not just temporarily immobile or stunned, but a statue for who knows how long. She should take comfort in knowing she hadn’t felt it, that she hadn’t been awake and immobilized and bound in place by magic (and anger). She should take comfort in that, but Regina didn’t, couldn’t, because she remembered too well what that felt like after all.

 “Aren’t there more delicate ways to ask someone if they had once been a statue?” She snapped, the lacings of her gown biting into her ribcage as she bit back a scream. “Or do you not receive etiquette classes as part of your training?”

“Oh. Right. Ah, sorry.” Emma crossed her arms and stepped back, leaning away. “How’d you wake up, anyway?”

“I could’ve woken up anytime I wanted, dear,” Regina purred, finding power in the lie. “Maybe I was waiting for the right moment. The right…ally.”

“And you chose this one? Me?” She snorted, a disgusting habit, and fiddled with the lace overlay on her skirt. “I’m not the one you want.”

“Is that what the princesses have you thinking? Please. I’m sure we could help each other quite excellently. Someone trusts you enough to give you run of the palace.” Regina smiled her nicest smile, tucking the points of her teeth under her lips. “I’m sure a smart, curious girl such as yourself could go just about…anywhere.”

“They don’t not want me,” Emma snapped, fire flashing suddenly in her eyes. “I don’t want to be with them. And I’m not your puppet or your handmaid, so if you want something, use your words and ask nicely.”

This time when Regina smiled, it was genuine. The girl had some bite to her, a touch of unbridled spirit. It’d be harder to break her, yes, but a much more rewarding journey.  

“I find myself wishing for something to eat,” she admitted.

The strain of talking through a half-hardened mouth was pulling on her eyelids and dragging the bitter taste of exhaustion along the back of her throat. Most of her body was still fighting through the—the spell or the charm or the curse, whatever it may be—and the effort of breaking free was much more demanding than Regina had anticipated.

“I’m not letting you out until you tell me who you are.”

On second thought, a naïve and fumbling serving girl would be a welcome relief. “Fine. Then could you find it in your simpering, self-righteous heart to fetch me something yourself?”

“And where did you take your etiquette classes, the dark side of the moon? You’re supposed to ask nicely when someone does you a favor, you know. It’s sort of a rule.”

Regina snarled, and wished she could in fact turn the girl into a toad. How dare she give orders to a queen! “Forgive me, I’d get on my knees and beg, but I don’t seem to be able to move!”

“Just say please.”

“I’d rather die, thank you, dear.”

“Fine.” Emma stepped back from the bars, tucking her arms behind her back. Her chin was raised in a stubborn position Regina recognized too well, and there was something obnoxiously royal about the set of her eyes. “Have it your way.”

The serving girl turned and walked away, too, although she was dragging her feet to the stairs as if _she_ was the one with stone legs. Regina knew better than to let her emotions have full reign like this—a queen was never so easily swayed from a bigger, better plan. The girl would prove useful later. And she really was hungry.  

“Please,” Regina hissed, pushing the word through her teeth.

Emma’s smile was brighter than the blaze of the torch, and just as overwhelming for her tired eyes. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

 

**

 

To the girl’s credit, she returned surprisingly quickly and had managed to conceal a shocking array of stolen food in the folds of her skirt. Regina tried her best to refrain from wolfing down the food like a commoner, nibbling on the ends of a loaf of bread and daintily pulling slivers of ham from the bone. Her right arm was working, thankfully, but her stomach seemed anxiously torn between starving and overwhelmed.  

“So what’s your name?” Emma asked around a mouthful of bread. She’d taken a seat on the stone ground just past the cell, her skirts fanned carelessly and her legs tucked under her. Emma had kept a small amount of the food for herself, and Regina found she honestly didn’t mind.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“I told you mine.”

But Regina’s name was enough to send the girl running upstairs, to end all of this with the certainty of a falling blade. “And that was rather foolish of you, dear.”

“Fine.” Emma shrugged, nonplussed. She wiped her hands on the bodice of her gown and bit into a peach, one of three she’d brought down and the only piece of fruit with a bruise. “You’ll tell me eventually.”

“Why?” Regina stopped eating, swallowing the bite of meat that’d suddenly turned to ash in her mouth. “Or otherwise I won’t be allowed to eat?”

The girl’s eyes widened, and she dropped her peach into the bell of her lap. “No!” She barked, emphatically. “That’d be terrible. I—I wouldn’t do that.”

Regina found she was surprisingly chagrined by the genuine force of the girl’s surprise. “Oh.”

“I’m just that charming,” Emma recovered, smiling at Regina over the top of her fruit. It was a real smile, too, relaxed and curled at the corners, breathing warmth into her eyes. Regina found it unequivocally irritating, of course.  

“What leads you to assume I’ll let you come back?” She snapped, chewing her bite of ham forcefully enough for her jaw to protest.

Emma, however, was similarly unperturbed, and had the gall to wink at Regina instead of cowering away. “What makes you think you can stop me?”

“I see your point.” The Evil Queen could stop her, Regina knew, but she wasn’t exactly the Evil Queen anymore. Not yet, anyhow.

The girl sobered, glancing down at the ends of her bread as though it’d suddenly sprouted something fascinating. She picked at a loose thread at her hemline and stared at her fingers. “Do you, ah, do you want me to come back?”

And, Regina found, she rather did want the serving girl to return. It was because she was trapped here alone with no other choice of company, of course, and because the girl was the most likely candidate to set her free. Obviously. But the idea of the girl coming back, of them not exactly talking but not exactly fighting, either, or sharing the ease of a meal together, was an idea Regina did not find altogether unpleasant.

“It’s not as though I have any say in the matter,” she said instead, and stared hard at the white bone lying flat in her palm.

“Right.”

Emma stood up, brushing crumbs from her lap with a flick of her skirts. “I should let you be, right? Privacy and all.” She headed for the stairs, one side of her skirt twisted in her left hand as she took the steps two at a time.

The girl was halfway to the door and nearly out of sight before Regina lost her nerve. “Emma?”

Silence, except for the scrape of silk on stone somewhere overhead.

“Next time, do see if you can find more of this bread. I find I quite like it.”

Regina couldn’t see Emma’s smile, but she was rather certain she could hear it. “As you wish.”

***


End file.
